Saturday, June 8, 2013

Troy Toole

We had a 4.5 DQ.

Troy Toole, of the Good-er Guys, who was a self rate and had played 4 matches, 3 at line 3 doubles and one at line 2 doubles. Not exactly a high risk DQ, one would think. But as you know, the computer sometimes has a mind of its own.

I quickly looked him up on that ratings website I mentioned last week, and he was listed at 4.48 (through matches of 5/17), so he was in the danger zone. It adds some credence to the algorithm being used by that website, in my opinion.

The DQ moves the Deucebags into first place, and drops the Good-er Guys to 5-1. I'm guessing that he was playing in the rain interrupted match between the two teams, but I have no knowledge of that. It definitely makes the Wild Card race interesting. The Good-er Guys may end up on the outside looking in, despite a talented roster.

123 comments:

Sometimes you just can't figure these things. I think most people would have assumed someone like Danny Schnyder or Christopher Lee would have gotten nabbed before Toole, given their singles success and self-rate status.

This got me thinking, how to spot a tanker. There's probably a lot of ways to look at the #'s, here's one how else do we look at the numbers?

Look at the TLS ratings at the end of 2012 through 5/17/2013, and look at players who had gained at least half a level (0.25 rating points in this time). Of 1800ish players, very few had improved this much, I think it's very difficult to make that big of a jump unless you have underrated yourself in the past or tanked.

Here's the list of players on 4.0 teams:Bryant Chan (double_trouble) went from 3.04 to 3.83, change of 0.79Ronnie R Pedroso (ace_n_spinners) went from 2.92 to 3.62, change of 0.70David Vincent Bryce (poachers) went from 2.50 to 3.14, change of 0.64David A. Rudolph (predators) went from 3.50 to 4.05, change of 0.55Eric D. Schultz (poachers) went from 3.25 to 3.70, change of 0.45Evan Fontenot (sienna) went from 3.66 to 4.10, change of 0.44Robert Dornbos (hurricanes) went from 3.68 to 4.10, change of 0.42Juan Carlos Guarin (spin_drs) went from 3.53 to 3.93, change of 0.40Xavier Pena (acers) went from 3.53 to 3.92, change of 0.39Camilo Rodriguez (spin_drs) went from 3.62 to 4.00, change of 0.38Christiaan B. Stevens (spin_drs) went from 3.45 to 3.83, change of 0.38Roger Oppenheim (spin_drs) went from 3.51 to 3.87, change of 0.36Ronald Toht (predators) went from 3.24 to 3.60, change of 0.36Peter Charles Nasser (cobra_kai) went from 3.19 to 3.55, change of 0.36Miles Marks (lakeside) went from 3.70 to 4.05, change of 0.35Rob Vargas (ace_n_spinners) went from 3.75 to 4.08, change of 0.33William K. Mao (sienna) went from 3.59 to 3.92, change of 0.33Richard J. Patton (hurricanes) went from 3.68 to 3.99, change of 0.31Greg S. Olinger (good_guys) went from 3.63 to 3.93, change of 0.30Bill Seitz (controlled_terror) went from 3.71 to 4.01, change of 0.30William Kelly (aces) went from 3.52 to 3.82, change of 0.30Michael Tran (hurricanes) went from 3.50 to 3.80, change of 0.30Jonathan Henderson (columbia_lakes) went from 3.43 to 3.72, change of 0.29Alan Michael Kramer (controlled_terror) went from 3.78 to 4.06, change of 0.28Kevin Viet Trinh (sienna) went from 3.74 to 4.02, change of 0.28Alan Moon (thors) went from 3.63 to 3.90, change of 0.27Noor Mirza (double_trouble) went from 3.23 to 3.50, change of 0.27Oscar J. Santollani (aches_n_pains) went from 3.45 to 3.71, change of 0.26Robert P. Smith (quail_valley) went from 3.12 to 3.38, change of 0.26

Same for 4.5:Jeep Christian (hrc) went from 3.25 to 3.90, change of 0.65Lance Thrower (lobsters) went from 3.82 to 4.34, change of 0.52Nicolas LARGE (serve_folley) went from 3.65 to 4.17, change of 0.52Peter Talosig (gooder_guys) went from 3.75 to 4.21, change of 0.46Robert Dornbos (serve_folley) went from 3.68 to 4.10, change of 0.42Luis Morales (unicorns) went from 3.88 to 4.29, change of 0.41Jeffrey M. Jordan (black_sheep) went from 4.06 to 4.45, change of 0.39David Hall (deucebags) went from 4.46 to 4.82, change of 0.36Adam Park (hulks) went from 3.91 to 4.27, change of 0.36Bret Alan Bosker (lobsters) went from 3.79 to 4.14, change of 0.35Richard R. Boehck (deucebags) went from 3.92 to 4.26, change of 0.34Tomas Huynh (clambakes) went from 3.68 to 4.02, change of 0.34Sam Ahn (lobsters) went from 3.83 to 4.15, change of 0.32Ryan A. Morone (hulks) went from 3.84 to 4.15, change of 0.31Victor H. Rocca (gooder_guys) went from 3.93 to 4.24, change of 0.31Richard J. Patton (gautamizers) went from 3.68 to 3.99, change of 0.31Corbin E. Cooke (black_sheep) went from 4.15 to 4.46, change of 0.31Dan Le (gooder_guys) went from 3.96 to 4.27, change of 0.31Dan B Gillis (net_crushers) went from 3.53 to 3.83, change of 0.30Trey Everett Dugas (deucebags) went from 4.11 to 4.38, change of 0.27Miguel A. Morales (deucebags) went from 4.11 to 4.38, change of 0.27Joshua E. Bruce-Black (hulks) went from 3.98 to 4.24, change of 0.26Lee R. Johns (lobsters) went from 3.84 to 4.10, change of 0.26Andres Zornosa (net_crushers) went from 3.60 to 3.86, change of 0.26

A pretty fun race is shaping up in Austin 4.5. AusTennis is 9-0, 42-3, Lakeway is 8-1, 39-6 (also AdIn is 8-1, 35-10). AusTennis and Lakeway play in the last week of the season, so winning every line has been crucial for the top two teams.

As a side note, Lakeway's top player, Conrad Ramirez, is a self-rate, and has a 4.48 rating according to TLS. They have been using him every week in order to stay within striking distance, but he has dropped the first set of his last three matches.

Should they manage to overtake AusTennis in the last match, I'm guessing they'll be on pins and needles waiting for Todd Reed to run the numbers.

A lot of 4.5's are D2/D3. It depends on how good Lees-McRae is and how highly ranked Marnitz is. Were either 'top ranked'?

4.5:"NAIA, Div. 2 & 3 unranked college team player (commited to, playing, or played ) -program with no scholarships (notmuch stronger than High School tennis); Junior College player;Former Juniors who had national (foreign or domestic) rankings but did not tour or play in college"

5.0:"Div. 1 unranked college team or player; NAIA, Div. 2 & 3 top ranked college team or player (commited to, playing, or played ) "

"Domestic or foreign Junior 18's ranked in top 150 nationally or in a section in the top 20 "

"Domestic or foreign Adults ranked in the top 20 nationally or in a section in the top 10 "

5.5:"Div. 1 Top 75 ranked collegeteam or player (commited to, playing, or played)"

It has nothing to do with how good he is, the issue is he clearly lied when answering the self-rating questions. To me, that is the prick move. If you really want to "let the system decide if he is too good" then he should have answered the questions correctly, got his 5.0 rating and then the system would have bumped him down to 4.5.

How the hell does Sydney Jim keep getting a 4.5 rating, what an absolute joke. Just shows lying wins out in USTA Tennis, does not take a rocket scientist in this case to see there was some out right lying on player history

At 4.48, he actually isn't that close to being in danger so that number can't be that accurate. The threshold for strikes isn't 4.5, it is a bit higher, at least 4.6 or 4.65 in my experience.

I have done some estimated dynamic NTRP reports for people in Houston (see http://sites.google.com/site/computerratings/usta-tennis/example-report) and so have a few of Troy's matches reviewed already and through 5/17 would have estimated that he had 2 strikes and a rating of quite a bit higher than 4.48, more around 4.7, which would seem to be a lot more accurate given that he did get the DQ after one more match.

(Extremely) small sample size, but it makes me wonder if the TLS ratings calculations are a bit low overall. I know nothing about their accuracy and in fact stumbled upon the website before posting a link to it here. Still, it fascinates me.

Have you done any backtesting on your algorithm's accuracy, Kevin? I do know of at least one Houstonian who purchased a report from you, and it seemed to be accurate.

Regarding accuracy, for the reports I did at the end of last year, I was 93% accurate on having people at the right level including bump ups and downs. During this year, I've correctly predicted a number of DQs or my ratings have been in agreement with DQs that have occurred. There will always be some differences, I'm not attempting to do true year-end calculations with benchmark players and all, but I'm fairly pleased with how accurate I've been.

I have not run those specific statistics, but the majority of people who requested reports were doing so because they thought they might be bumped up or down and were pretty close to a threshold. In fact, I just checked and 74% of the requesters ratings were within 0.1 of a threshold, so I didn't have a lot of non-borderline players.

And as I noted earlier, I am estimating the dynamic rating that is updated throughout the year. Year end ratings include benchmark calculations and in some sections tournament results that I don't include in my estimates and these are likely contributing factors to any "misses" I have.

And while the NTRP wasn't necessarily created to predict winners of matches, in some of the checking I've done recently during some district and sectional play (which should have closely rated players and competitive matches), my ratings were 23-5 predicting winners. See http://computerratings.blogspot.com/2013/05/how-accurate-is-ustas-dynamic-ntrp-at.html, http://computerratings.blogspot.com/2013/05/usta-dynamic-ntrp-accuracy-part-2.html, and http://computerratings.blogspot.com/2013/05/usta-dynamic-ntrp-accuracy-part-3.html.

I'd say that an 82% rate at predicting winners is an indication my ratings are probably pretty accurate.

The fact that the ratings were 23-5 at predicting ratings just shows that the NTRP is fairly accurate at prediction, it doesn't show how well your prediction mirrors the NTRP rating. This shows me if I'm a captain interested in creating good lineups I can look at your data to predict my teams strength and the opposing teams strength. But if I'm a captain looking to figure out if my self rates will get DQed you haven't told me anything useful.

Your statements lead me to believe you only 'run statistics' when players request a report. Wouldn't you need something like the TLS data that predicts *all* players ratings from *all* matches to be accurate? Surely you can write a script/program to run all DQs through your algorithm and calculate how accurate your prediction was? I would think you would want to do this in order to tweak your calculations. Aren't a large portion of your customers interested in # of strikes?

I can't see how he could do it accurately without running the numbers for the entire section, or at least for all the players in the same city. Do you do that, Kevin? If I want to buy a report for myself, what procedure do you go through? Do you have to recalculate all of Texas?

1) To get DQed someone has to contest your rating. It won't happen on it's own.2) To get DQed you have to have 3 consecutive matches above your rating level. For example if you get bumped from 4.5 to 5.0 you have to be at 4.50 or higher for 3 consecutive matches. If you are at 4.51, 4.49, 4.51, 4.51 that would only be 2 strikes, because in your 2nd match you dropped below the 4.50 level.

What is “Clearly above level”? The USTA does not disclose this exact value and it is different depending on the level. Lower levels are allowed more tolerance than higher levels but generally the tolerance is greater than (0.10). For example a 3.5 Level player generating a Dynamic Rating of 3.6 would not be considered “Clearly above level” and would not get a Strike counted against them.

I bet the TLS is just calculating the computer rating levels without taking this into account. I think with this information and the TLS data as rating references you can calculate things more accurately for self rates. Because of this, I believe in general that the TLS data will generally under-rate self rates.

"The exception is when a Computer-Rated player plays a Self-Rated player. In this case, the Computer-Rated player does not get a new Dynamic Rating. The Self-rated player gets a new Dynamic Rating established relative to the Computer-Rated player’s Dynamic Rating using the CRD derived from the scores in that match (See Table 1 above). If two self-rated players play each other, the computer ignores the results and does not generate a Dynamic Rating for either player. There is one other significant difference in the way Dynamic Ratings are calculated for the Self-Rated player. The first 3 times a Self-Rated player plays against a Computer-Rated player, a new Dynamic Rating is calculated independently without being averaged with any other ratings. The 4th time the Self-Rated player plays against a Computer-Rated player, the new Dynamic Rating is calculated the same way but it is then averaged with the first 3 independently calculated Dynamic ratings to generate the 4th Dynamic Rating. After four Dynamic Ratings are generated for the Self-Rated player the computer treats them just like a Computer-Rated player."

I do run all data within a an area/district/section as needed including looking at past year results in order to have an accurate starting point for this year. It is a lot of work the first time but subsequent players in the same area/district/section are a lot easier after that.

And yes, have looked at specific DQs and verified that I've predicted the vast majority of them. If I'm correctly predicting bump ups/downs the majority of the time, predict DQs correctly the majority of the time, and predict winners in matches the majority of the time, I don't think I'm that far off. I've also spot checked a variety of players between my ratings and TLS and I've been more accurate in predicting bump ups/downs.

To inquire about a report, contact me at computerratings@techrunning.com. I'll look at your specific situation and give you a quote, but it is usually $20 for a detailed report similar to what you see here: https://sites.google.com/site/computerratings/usta-tennis/example-report

Eliminated:JCC : 5-3 (24-16) - 3 team lossesHRC: 4-3 (16-19) - 3 team lossesFalcon Pt: 5-2 (22-13) - Too many individual losses even if they win outDouble Trouble: 8-2 (32-18) - Either Hawkeyes or Copperfield will win their next match. Winner has tied record and wins tie breakCopperfield/Hawkeyes - One of these teams will win the division with a win in the final match, the other drops to 7-3 and is eliminated

How does someone like Sydney Jim play as a 4.5? As late as 2008 he has results that are posted on ATPtour.com. I always wonder about people like this and wonder what kind of satisfaction he gets out of playing 4.5. Or is it that he doesn't want to risk losing in the higher level leagues?

Keep, in mind, however, that he was a very low level pro.

As far as Freeman goes, if the USTA system allows him to have Jim on his team, why shouldn't. I agree it is crazy however you can't blame him.

In the past I have played in tournaments, I remember one fellow from Dallas who was 4.0. He said he played D2 and was mandatory rated 4.5 at least until he turned 30. Then his rating was allowed to potentially drop. Did that guy not know what he was talking about or are others somehow abusing the system?

So how does Sydney win all his line 1 singles matches(5.0 2012 sugarcreek team) and doubles matches except for 3 close dubs matches.... yet he gets bumped down to 4.5? something just don't seem to add up.

The Austin 4.5 race continues to intrigue me. Both AusTennis and Lakeway posted 5-0 wins. Vulnerable player alert: Conrad Ramirez won 6-4, 6-2 at line 1 singles, and Tim Klitch won 6-2, 6-1 at #1 doubles.

There are occasionally comments made on here about some team being "eliminated" from the playoff race. It's kinda' fun when a team thinks they're out of it and a DQ happens and things take a 180.

In this case, perhaps the Captains are aware of the risk but are playing their vulnerable players due to the closeness of the race. Or maybe they're oblivious. Or maybe I'm overstating the players' risks. We'll see.

A local example: In 4.0, Copperfield S&A and the Hawkeyes seemingly have a do-or-die makeup match. The Hawkeyes are screwed if they don't win, but they also have a player who COULD be vulnerable (Dan Watson). They could win the match and yet see it reversed. Maybe Double Trouble still has a chance (I haven't checked to see what the impact would be, or if there are any other vulnerable players, even). Still, you gotta' play the guy and let the chips fall where they may when your season is on the line.

Why do you even take the write some of the crap that comes out of your mouth?

Do you really care if S & A, Hawkeyes or Double Trouble make it into the playoffs?

You already know that the system is rigged and Freeman along with his band of cheaters will win regardless of who makes it into the playoffs.

4.0, 4.5... it doesn't matter.

Unless something drastic happens with the HTA or USTA (Todd Reed) towards the actions of Freeman, nothing will change and everybody will be playing for second place. It's a waste of time once playoffs come around.

The readers of this blog is divided into two camps: those who are on Freeman's team and are in denial of their behavior and their stupid allegiance to him and those who despise everything about Freeman and his band of cheaters.

I'm not as involved with the Hurricane goings-on as I once was. But I can assure you Sydney's eligibility is not in question. I don't have any reason to deflect attention from Sydney. I honestly have no idea if he's even playing/practicing or planning on playing in the playoffs. I think the team will be fine with or without him, though obviously the ceiling is much higher with him.

curios to know why every new topic on this blog starts with a mention of players on other teams that are ready to be DQed and those who are supposedly illegal self-rates but none is ever mentioned from the hurricanes?

why wasn't sydney jim given his own headlines?

you could have started the topic with something like this: "nothing new here: hurricanes cheat again!"

Actually, he is just stating the facts. Should someone like Zach Marnitz who is currently playing college tennis be allowed to play? Under the self rating guidelines he is ineligible. Shouldn't he be discussed?

No, I meant to say Marnitz is a good player who will be under scrutiny and illegally self rated. I have no idea who Reeves is so I wont comment. I'm merely talking about 4.5. I'm not a hurricane activist, if that is what your trying to insinuate. There are other teams than the hurricanes, let's not forget that.

2) he then creates teams in the fall and has one of his sycophants run the team(i.e. robert rizzari, ronnie kwan, bruce inting, eddie janek, daniel goodwin, michael tran, bethuel gabriel, benedict gabriel) in order for them to input fake scores, have the players lose on purpose, and/or manage their scores for the sole purpose of qualifying as computer rated players.

3) he doesn't want to be caught cheating so he has everyone else do it for him.

4) he also fills out most of his recruits self-rate questionnaires and lies about it since he pays for their registration.